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Preservation of the Bible
What manuscripts did the cradle of Christianity possess right after the conception of the Christian church? “By the Syrian Church of Antioch which produced, eminent scholarship; by the Italic Church in northern Italy; And also, at the same time, by the Gallic Church in southern France and by the Celtic Church in Great Britain; by the pre-Waldensian, the Waldensian and the churches of the Reformation. These manuscripts have in agreement with them, by far the vast majority of copies of the original text. So vast is this majority that even the enemies of the Received Text admit that nineteen-twentieths of all Greek manuscripts are of this class.” Les Garrett, 1982, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press, pg. 64 Fundamentally, how many streams of Bibles are there? “Fundamentally, there are only two streams of Bibles. The first stream, which carried the Received Text in Hebrew and Greek, precious manuscripts were preserved by such as the church in Pella in Palestine where Christians fled, when in 70 A.D. the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. By the Syrian Church of Antioch which produced, eminent scholarship; by the Italic Church in northern Italy;” David Otis Fuller D.D. What about the second stream of Bibles? “There is a second stream, which is a very small one and it’s based on ancient manuscripts. They represent in Greek, the Vatican manuscript, or Codex B, and this one, was in the library at Rome was used to counteract the Reformation because it says different things to the one that the Reformers used. So at the time of the Reformation, Codex B became very prominent.” How old is this battle between bibles? “The present controversy between the King James Bible in English and the modern versions is the same old contest fought out between the early church and rival sects; and later between the Waldenses and the Papists from the fourth to the thirteenth centuries; and later still between the Reformers and the Jesuits in the sixteenth century.” Which Bible and True or False, edited by David Otis Fuller Where were the manuscripts found that the modern translations are based on? “We need to understand that many of the new translations are taken from old manuscripts. People think they are more reliable. No, they’re just old. “In actual fact, they are saying, that a manuscript that was found in a waste paper basket in a cave in Mt. Sinai and questionable manuscripts from Alexandria, are more reliable than the Received Text.” Les Garett, 1982, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press pg. 15 Who was connected to the writing of these old manuscripts? “Origen, being a textual critic is supposed to have corrected numerous portions of the sacred manuscripts. Evidence to the contrary shows that he changed them to agree with his own human philosophy of mystical and allegorical ideas. Thus, through deceptive scholarship of this kind, certain manuscripts became corrupt.” Les Garett, 1982, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press pg. 16 NOTE: Who was this textual critic named Origen? He was actually, believe it or not, was an old initiate, we’ll find him in the Masonic Writings, he was an insider, we’ll find him as an old initiate. What were some of those allegorical views that he held to? One allegorical belief that he had was that he believed that man was divine, and therefore, there was not just one divine man that came to this earth, we are all divine, which is Masonic teaching, even to this day. What did Constantine order to be written in 313 AD? “In 331 AD, Constantine ordered that an ‘ecumenical Bible’ be written. Eusebius, a follower of Origen, was assigned to direct this task. Eusebius rejected the deity of Christ and claimed that Christ was a created being. This error is called the Arian heresy.” What was discovered in 1481 AD? “In 1481 AD, the Vatican Manuscript was discovered in the Vatican Library. This manuscript repeatedly casts aside the deity of Christ. It reflects the Arianism of Origen and is thought by some to be one of the surviving manuscripts done by Eusebius at the command of Constantine. The date of its writing coincides with the ‘ecumenical Bible’ of Constantine.” NOTE: Just in time to counter the Reformation. Council of Trent (1545-1563) proposed the Vulgate Latin Bible as the only authentic translation. Pope Sixtus V declared the Vulgate infallible but Clement III in 1592 ordered a better edition and 2000 changes were made. What was discovered in 1844? “In 1844, The Sinaitic manuscript was discovered at Mt. Sinai in the monastery of St. Catherine. It agrees closely with the Vatican manuscript and minimizes the deity of Christ and is Arian in nature. These two manuscripts were probably the two of the fifty that were written for Constantine.” By 1881, what movements began to shape the future outlook in regards to these older, but less accurate manuscripts? “In 1881, The Westcott and Hort Greek text was introduced. This text departed from the Textus Receptus and follows the Vatican and Sinaitic corruption. The Jehovah’s Witness Bible entitled the ‘New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures’ was translated from the text of Westcott and Hort.” So, is this battle of the Bibles over versions or manuscripts? “And it must be emphasized that the argument is not between an ancient text and a recent one, but between two ancient forms of the text, one of which was rejected and the other adopted and preserved by the Church as a whole and remaining in common use for more than fifteen centuries.” Les Garett, 1982, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press pg. 46 Therefore, the argument is not King James versus other versions. The argument is Received Text, the Textus Receptus, versus the small little stream that comes from Sinai and the Vatican. That’s the argument. Which manuscript did the great reformer William Tyndale use? “William Tyndale used the Received Text and said to the Pope, ‘If God spare my life, before many years, I will cause a boy that driveth a plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou doest.’” God Wrote Only One Bible, by Jasper James Ray NOTE: Once again the issue is not the King James Version versus all the other Bibles, but the “Received Text” versus the other Manuscripts. By the way, any Bible, in any language, that existed before the 1900’s, is Received Text. What was the attitude of Jesuits like toward the Textus Receptus? “We must undermine the Bible of the Protestants and destroy their teachings.” The Queen of England realizing the damage the Jesuit Bible would do, sent to Europe for Beza, who was with John Calvin, to help … Thomas Cartwright… With one hand he took hold of all the Greek Manuscripts and with the other hand he took hold of all the Latin manuscripts from the Received Text, and he Jesuit Bible blow after blow…Finally the Spanish Armada came against England to make war with 136 armed ships, some with 50 cannos…England could only gather 30 ships and these were led by Sir Francis Drake. Freak storms came down the English channel and the Spanish ships were found wrecked right up to the Scottish coast and England became a great sea power.” Les Garett, 1982, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press pg.60 “Then the Bible, that serpent which with head erect and eyes flashing threatens us with its venom while it trails along the ground, shall be changed into a rod as soon as we are able to seize it… for three centuries past this cruel asp has left us no repose. You well know with what folds it entwines us and with what fangs it gnaws us.” The Jesuits in History, Hector Macpherson, (Springfield, Missouri; Ozark Book Publishers, 1997; Originally Published in 1900, Appendix 1) “Wherever the so-called Counter-Reformation, started by the Jesuits, gained hold of the people, the vernacular was suppressed and the Bible kept from the laity. So eager were the Jesuits to destroy the authority of the Bible – the paper pope of the Protestants, as they contemptuously called it – that they even did not refrain from criticizing its genuineness and historical value.” Von Dobshutz, The Influence of the Bible, pg. 136 What does Freemasonry have to say about these issues? “…the absurd reading of the established Church, taking literally the figurative, allegorical, and mythical language of a collection of Oriental books of different ages, The folly of regarding the Hebrew books as if they had been written by the unimaginative, hard, practical intellect of the England of James the First and the bigoted stolidity of Scottish Presbyterianism.” “The Better to succeed and win partisans, the Templars sympathized with regrets for dethroned creeds.” And encouraged the hopes of new worships, promising to all liberty of conscience and a new orthodoxy that should be the synthesis of all the persecuted creeds.” Morals and Dogma, pg. 818 NOTE: So you see, Freemasonry hates the Received Text. It has it in its Lodge, purely as a symbol. What did Dean Burgon say? (He was a critic of these older and less accurate manuscripts.) “No Sooner, was the Work of Evangelists and Apostles recognized as the necessary counterpart and complement of God’s ancient Scriptures and became the ‘New Testament’, than a reception was to be found to be awaiting it in the world closely resembling that which He experienced who is the subject of its pages. Calumny and misrepresentation, persecution and murderous hate, assailed Him continually…And the Written Word in like manner, in the earliest age of all, was shamefully handled by mankind. Not only was it confused through human infirmity and misapprehension, but it became also the object of restless malice and unsparing assaults.” Dean Burgon, Traditional Text, pg. 10 In connection with Westcott and Hort’s theory Dean Burgon writes: “We oppose facts to their speculation. They exalt B and Aleph and D8 because in their own opinions those copies are the best. They weave ingenious webs and invent subtle theories, because their paradox of a few against the many requires ingenuity and subtlety for its support. Dr. Hort revealed in finespun theories and technical terms such as, ‘Intrinsic Probability,’ ‘Internal evidence of documents, which of course connote a certain amount of evidence, but are weak pillars of a heavy structure…Even conjectural emendation and inconsistent decrees are not rejected. They are infected with the theorizing, which spoils some of the best German work, and with the idealism which is the bane of many academic minds especially at Oxford and Cambridge. In contrast with this sojourn in cloudland, we are essentially of the earth though not earthly. We are nothing if we are not grounded in facts: Our appeal is to facts, our test lies in facts, so far as we can build testimonies upon testimonies and pile facts on facts. We imitate the procedures of the courts of justice in decisions resulting from the converging product of all evidence when it has been cross-examined and sifted… I am utterly disinclined to believe, so grossly improbable does it seem – that at the end of 1800 years, 995 copies out of every thousand, suppose, will prove untrustworthy; and that one, two, three, four or five which remain, whose contents were till yesterday as good as unknown, will be found to have retained the secret of what the Holy Spirit originally inspired. What in the meantime is to be thought of those blind guides – those deluded ones – who would now, if they could, persuade us to go back to those same codices of which the Church hath already purged herself?” The Revision Revised, pg. 334-335 “Who but those with Roman Catholic sympathies could ever be pleased with the notion that God preserved the true New Testament text in secret for almost one thousand years and then finally handed it over to the Roman pontiff for safekeeping?” Les Garett, 1982, Which Bible Can We Trust? Christian Centre Press pg. 91-92 According to Roman Catholicism, why would a Jesuit feign himself a Prostestant? “Despite all the persecution they (the Jesuits) have met with,” this is a Roman Catholic speaking, “they have not abandoned England, where there are a greater number of Jesuits than in Italy.There are Jesuits in all classes of society; in Parliament; among the English clergy, among the Protestant laity, even in the higher stations. I could not comprehend how a Jesuit could be a Protestant priest, or how a Protestant priest could be a Jesuit; but my Confessor silenced my scruples by telling me, omnia munda mundis¸ and that Saint Paul became a Jew that he might save the Jews; it was no wonder therefore that if a Jesuit should feign himself a Protestant, for the conversion of a Protestant. But pay attention, I entreat you, to discover concerning the nature of the religious movement in England termed Puseyism.” “The English clergy were formerly too much attached to their Articles of Faith to be shaken from them. You might have employed in vain all the machines set in motion by Bossuet and the Jansenists of France, to reunite them to the Romish Church; and so the Jesuits of England tried another plan. This was to demonstrate from history and ecclesiastical antiquity the legitimacy of the usages of the English Church, whence, through the exertions of the Jesuits concealed among its clergy, might arise a studious attention to Christian antiquity.” Desanctis, Popery and Jesuitism at Rome, pg. 128, 134, quoted in Walsh, Secret History of Oxford Movement, pg. 33 (Desantis was Priest at Rome, Professor of Theology, official Theological Censor of the Inquistion) NOTE: Who wrote this? Who wrote that the Jesuits were the priests in the Protestant Churches? It was Descantes, a Priest at Rome, Professor of Theology, official Theological Censor of the Inquisition. The man himself tells us that it was so. In the time period of the early to mid 1800’s, what were some of the leaders of the English Church saying about Protestantism? “Protestantism is perishing: what is good in it is by God’s mercy being gathered into the garners of Rome… My whole life, God willing, shall be one crusade against the detestable and diabolical heresy of Protestantism.” J.E. Bowden, Life of F.W. Faber, (1869) pg. 192. NOTE: Very Interesting that at least some of the high leadership of the English Church would hold such a negative view of Protestantism. Who were Westcott and Hort? And what beliefs helped them in their revision of the Manuscripts that all modern versions are based upon? Biography - Wescott was born in 1825. Hort was born in 1828. They were members of the Broad Church (or High Church) Party of the Church of England. They became friends during their students days at Cambridge University. They worked together. Westcott became Bishop of Durham and Hort is best remembered as Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. Hort’s View On Evolution - “The beginning of an individual is precisely as inconceivable as the beginning of a species… It certainly startles me to find you saying that you have seen no facts which support such a view as Darwin’s. His book drove me to the conclusion that some kind of development must be supposed.” (Life, pg. 430. 431) November 9, 1860, Letter from Hort to Macmillan - “Another last word on Darwin… I shall not let the subject drop in a hurry, or, to speak more correctly, it will not let me drop…” (Life, pg. 433-434) December 20, 1851, Letter from Hort to Ellerton – “ I had no idea till the last few weeks of the importance of texts, having read so little Greek Testament, and dragged on with the villainous Text Receptus.Think of that Textus Receptus, Leaning entirely on late manuscripts, it is a blessing there are such early ones.” (Life, Volume 1, pg. 211) September 29, Westcott writing to Hort – “As to our proposed recension of the New Testament text, or object should be, I suppose, to prepare a text for common and general use… With such an end in view, would it not be best to introduce only certain emendations, into the Received Text, and to take note in the margin such as seem likely or noticeable – after Griesbach’s manner?… I feel most keenly the disgrace of circulating what I feel to be falsified copies of Holy Scripture,” reference to the Authorized Version And I’m most anxious to provide something to replace them. This cannot be any text resting solely on our own judgment, even if we were not too inexperienced to make one.But it must be supported by a clear and obvious preponderance of evidence. The margin will give ample scope for our own ingenuity or principles.” My wish would be to leave the popular Received Text except where it is clearly wrong.” (Life, Volume 1, pg. 228-229) “Westcott, Gorham, C.B. Scott, Benson, Bradshaw, Laurd and I have started a society for the investigation of ghosts, and all supernatural appearances, and effects, being all disposed to believe that such things really exists, and ought to be discriminated from hoaxes and mere subjective delusions,” In 1882 the Society for Psychical Research was founded. In effect it was a combination of those groups already working independently. So they worked with telepathy, clairvoyance, etc., which is ancient occult wisdom. Cambridge University Ghost Society was founded by no less a person than Edward White Benson, the future Archbishop of Canterbury. 1854, A letter from Hort to Ellerton – “I agree with you in thinking it a pity that Maurice verbally repudiates purgatory, but I fully and unwaveringly agree with him in the three cardinal points of the controversy, that eternity is independent of duration, that the power of repentance is not limited to this life, That is it not revealed whether or not all will ultimately repent. The modern denial of the second has, I suppose, has more to do with the despiritualizing of theology then almost anything that could be named.” (Life, Volume 1, pg. 275) NOTE: Hort as well as Westcott rejected the idea of the infallibility of the Bible, called the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, that Jesus died for you, he called it “immoral”. He denied the historicity of Genesis, he praised Darwin and he denied the divinity of Christ. Also see Was the bible changed? Also see what happened to the bible in the Reign of Terror Category:History